Sunday, October 30, 2011

When it was time to work this group of 17 sheep on Friday, they were once again (that would be Version One) way out at the far end of the front field, grazing in the autumn sun while being guarded by Marta Beast.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Last spring my hunky farmguy Joe and I decided we would start spending part of each Sunday working the sheep. We've been really good about sticking to our schedule, and in all these months we've only blown off a couple of weeks.

Since sharing a farm with dozens of critters (current count: 78) means we live in a constant state of surprise, uncertainty, and the total inability to do almost anything at a designated time, keeping to this new routine has been nothing short of miraculous, especially since working the sheep is not something we really look forward to doing.

Friday, October 14, 2011

How to roast eggplant? Just dice it up, toss with a little olive oil, and pop it in the oven. This healthy way to cook eggplant is so simple, yet so flavorful.

When it comes to food I often tend to go overboard. I serve dinner salads that guests assume are meant to feed the entire table. I bake enormous cookies. I currently have 14 jars of organic peanut butter in my pantry.

More than once I've been declared the "highest grocery receipt of the month" at Trader Joe's, although in my defense the store is 200 miles away and I only get to shop there a couple of times a year. The checkers say things like, "Wow, you must really like cheese," and "Just how many cats do you have?" When they raise an eyebrow at the twelve pounds of organic carrots, I mention our seven donkeys.

So it wasn't surprising that when I moved from a tiny urban lot in Northern California to a sprawling Missouri farm back in 1994, my organic kitchen garden grew from around 60 square feet to about 10,000. I planted something like 174 different kinds of herbs, flowers, fruits, and vegetables, almost all of them started from seed. The gardening magazine editor who asked me to send him a complete planting list called my efforts "ambitious."

I've scaled back since then.

I'd never grown—or even cooked—eggplant before moving to Missouri, but the 20 plants in my first year's garden (what was I thinking?) rewarded me with a bumper crop. I ended up turning the majority of my harvest into caponata during a several month long canning rampage, but when I called the 800 canning hotline number for processing directions, I was sternly informed that I couldn't put up jars of caponata.

"Oh, yes I can!" I said, hanging up and taking my chances. (I lived.)

It would have been easier on everyone if I'd just roasted all that eggplant, which is what I did with the 15 beautiful dark purple ones I recently bought from our Amish neighbors.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Moving across the farmyard, rather than across town or across the country, is both good and bad.

Good: There isn't that one big exhausting moving day.

Bad: There isn't that one big exhausting moving day.

We actually started moving into our new home, which has been under construction for 8½ years, last year (we've been paying as we go and doing a lot of the work ourselves). The washing machine and a couple of new chest freezers went over, we started filling up the big walk-in pantry, we carted over various boxes and plastic tubs of stuff.

We began sleeping in the new house (which Joe says we need to just start calling 'the house') in August, the night before our new fancy air conditioning system broke for the third extremely exasperating time. Cross your fingers it's finally fixed (now that we don't need air conditioning).

Hopefully someday I'll actually have a surplus of zucchini (and be able to give up my one claim to fame), but in the meantime, Farmgirl Fare readers offer advice for using frozen shredded zucchini in this thread on the Farmgirl Fare Facebook page. If you have any tips to share, please join in the conversation! And if you make these muffins with frozen zucchini, I'd love to hear about it.

These moist and healthy muffins are sweetened with honey and/or molasses and are made without bran cereal.

So forget the photos and just go mix yourself up a batch of this new version of my super popular 100% Whole Grain Bran Muffins. They're flavorful and moist, packed with healthy vegetables and fiber goodness (but you don't have to tell anybody that part), freeze beautifully, are made without bran cereal and processed sugar, and taste really good.

With all that going for you, who needs to look good in pictures?

One of the best things about having a food and farm blog is hearing from readers all over the world who not only love to cook but are also interested in knowing where their food comes from. Karen Perry Stillerman is one Farmgirl Fare fan who goes a step beyond just caring.

She's a senior analyst (and new blogger!) for the Food & Environment program of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington D.C., the leading science-based nonprofit organization working for a cleaner environment and a safer world. What began as a collaboration between students and faculty members at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 is now an alliance of more than 250,000 citizens and scientists.

The goals of the UCS Food & Environment program are "to promote sustainable agriculture practices like organic and pasture-based systems while eliminating harmful 'factory farming' methods and strengthening government oversight of genetically engineered food."

One summer Karen wrote to say that she had become so addicted to my blueberry bran muffin recipe that she went and picked 15 pounds of blueberries at a U-Pick farm in Maryland and froze them so she could keep herself in muffins all winter. (Find U-Pick farms in your area at PickYourOwn.org, which includes international listings.)

A few months later she told me about her new apple blueberry version and said, "I'm starting to think that I can put just about anything in those muffins, and they'll turn out to be delicious!" This adaptation of her carrot, raisin, and zucchini variation helps to prove the point.